All Ye Faithful
by BANYA
Summary: Angel thinks about religion and the woman he loves (BA)


All Ye Faithful  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, Fox and Mutant Enemy and the WB and other people do.  
  
Fandom: BtVS and AtS  
  
Rating: PG13, I guess  
  
Distribution: If you already have my stuff, sure, if not, drop me a note first, please.  
  
Summary: Angel and religion and B/A angst, because a challenge I can't find asked for it. *shrugs* if you issued it, I hope I met what you were asking for.  
  
AN: Angel's POV, any faults are mine, not my beta's because I never got around to sending this to her.  
  
AN2: I mean no offence to anyone at all at any point in this fic, which sorely needs to be revised.  
  
Spoilers: None, really; okay, technically vague season 5 (BtVS) stuff, but really, really vague. It wouldn't ruin the show.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
When I was alive, I hated the Church. My family was publicly Protestant, privately Catholic, and between the two religions I was damned at least a thousand times each day. I always prided myself that I was openly sinful, but my father never saw things my way.  
  
He would drink until he passed out, or beat my mother, and then beat me for abusing alcohol and mistreating women. The whole of Gallway was the same, hiding their sins, but committing them none the less, asking forgiveness but never working for it.  
  
At eighteen, I stopped going to church altogether. It infuriated my father to no end, and earned me an even worse reputation, but I didn't care. I was, at my heart, religious, and I hated what the hypocrites did to God. I hated them.  
  
After Darla came to me, my obsession began. I destroyed religious sanctuaries of all denominations. I took obscene pleasure in raping priests and dancing in their blood on their own altars. Together, Darla and I nearly destroyed the whole of the Catholic church, from Rome to all of its farthest reaches.  
  
Having my soul restored caused me to stop believing in anything. No all powerful force could have let the monster I was have free reign over the world. I never stopped believing in Hell. I'd had it drilled into my head that that it was real and where I belonged, and I finally believed.  
  
Then I found Buffy. Buffy, with her bright eyes and soft self-depricating humor. Buffy, with her powerful with her powerful emotions and passionate strength. Buffy who supported me very step of the way, who never believed I belonged in Hell.  
  
Through her I found somethng. Not Christianity, nor that there was a group of all seeing, all powerful beings that flick their fingers and change our lives forever, but that there was something... good. That there was some point to my living so long.  
  
But I can't enter a church.  
  
She's spending Christmas with her father, another church goer who doesn't really believe, but he's a good man, and Buffy loves him. He certainly is more deserving of her love than I ever was.  
  
Riley is not with her, nor are her mother and Dawn; she and her father sit together in the first pew, singing the hymn with the rest of the parishioners.  
  
'Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant...  
  
I wonder again why I'm here. I'm no longer a Catholic; Buffy is here, though,a nd in so many ways, she is my religion. But she doesn't sense that I'm here. She doesn't know me anymore. She doesn't love me.  
  
I'm okay with that. I never expected her to love me in the first place. Truth be told, her love for me tarnished her in my mind, much as I reveled in it. Reasonably, I know my pedastal is taller than she is. She is a human teenager, not a Saint, in any religion. But I keep her up there, trying to protect her from my sins.  
  
"Angel."  
  
She spies me and mouths my name, even though she makes no sound (or none that I can hear from the back of the church), and the devotion in her face knocks me backward. Her expression is the same as mine was only moments before, as if I am her religion, though I know it can't be true.  
  
I am nothing; she is the entire world.  
  
She tries to warn me, you have to understand. She calls my name again, more urgently, but I'm too busy walking away as fast as I can while still staring at her to realize. The door I'm about to crash into is covered in crosses. And I barely feel their burn.  
  
~END~  
  
Hope it didn't suck! Feed me please! 


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